Law Commons^™

Regulating In Foresight Versus Judging Liability In Hindsight: The Case Of Tobacco, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Potentially dangerous products, such as cigarettes, can be regulated through ex post liability or ex ante regulation. Both systems should reach the same result. In practice, however, cognitive biases that influence the liability system can produce incentives to take an excess of precautions. In particular, because people tend to see past events as more predictable than they really were, judges and juries will tend to find defendants who took reasonable care negligent or even reckless. As a consequence of these biases, a liability system can be more expensive than a regulatory system, both to potential defendants and to society. Cognitive …

Product-Related Risk And Cognitive Biases: The Shortcomings Of Enterprise Liability, James A. Henderson Jr., Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Products liability law has witnessed a long debate over whether manufacturers should be held strictly liable for the injuries that products cause. Recently, some have argued that psychological research on human judgment supports adopting a regime of strict enterprise liability for injuries caused by product design. These new proponents of enterprise liability argue that the current system, in which manufacturer liability for product design turns on the manufacturer's negligence, allows manufacturers to induce consumers into undertaking inefficiently dangerous levels or types of consumption. In this paper we argue that the new proponents of enterprise liability have: (1) not provided any …

Ex Post ≠ Ex Ante: Determining Liability In Hindsight, Kim A. Kamin, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Participants in three conditions (foresight, hindsight, and a modified hindsight condition designed to ameliorate the hindsight effect) assessed whether a municipality should take, or have taken, precautions to protect a riparian property owner from flood damage. In the foresight condition, participants reviewed evidence in the context of an administrative hearing. Hindsight participants reviewed parallel materials in the context of a trial. Three quarters of the participants in foresight concluded that a flood was too unlikely to justify further precautions—a decision that a majority of the participants in hindsight found to be negligent. Participants in hindsight also gave higher estimates for …

Accidental Suicide Pacts And Creditor Collective Action Problems: The Mortgage Mess, The Deadweight Loss, And How To Get The Value Back, Robert C. Hockett

Robert C. Hockett

Sustained economic recovery will remain elusive in America, post-crash, until principal is reduced on some 10-13 million underwater home mortgage loans across the nation. Yet in the case of privately securitized loans, these write-downs are all but impossible to carry out on the requisite scale because bubble-era securitization contracts, which now effectively function as suicide pacts among bondholders, would require collective action by millions of geographically dispersed passive investors in order to authorize write-downs or sales out of securitization trusts. The solution, this article suggests, is for state and municipal governments to use their eminent domain powers to buy up …

A Dangerous Direction: Legal Intervention In Sexual Abuse Survivor Therapy, Cynthia Grant Bowman, Elizabeth Mertz

Cynthia Grant Bowman

No abstract provided.

Una Experiencia Comparada Del Derecho Antitrust: La Defensa Passing-On (A Comparative Experience Of The Antitrust Law: The Passing-On Defence), Jesús A. Soto

Jesús Alfonso Soto Pineda

RESUMEN: El artículo presenta la passing–on defence, como argumento de defensa de las empresas demandadas en el marco de procesos de reparación por daños y perjuicios surgidos de infracciones a las normas de libre competencia, haciendo referencia a las experiencias y actualidad de la figura en Estados Unidos y la Unión Europea, en busca de extraer el catálogo de beneficios e inconveniencias que apareja en la construcción de un sistema de defensa de la competencia que le acoja.

ABSTRACT: The article shows the passing–on defence, as an argument in favour of the cartel member in the liability process founded in …

Acts Of God Or Toxic Torts? Applying Tort Principles To The Problem Of Climate Change, Eduardo M. Peñalver

Eduardo M. Peñalver

The problem of climate change continues to be an intractable one for policymakers. Uncertainties over the likely costs of climate change as well as over the costs of proposed remedies have hampered the formation of a consensus regarding the best course of action. The principles of tort law provide a useful means of analyzing the problem of climate change, particularly the issue of who should bear the costs associated with its effects. The two major goals of tort law (reducing the costs of accidents and corrective justice) both point towards the appropriateness of placing the costs of climate change on …

Toward Healing And Restoration For All: Reframing Medical Malpractice Reform, Jonathan Todres

Jonathan Todres

The medical malpractice liability system is blamed for everything from the high cost of health care to quality assurance issues. This Article suggests that that one of the problems with the current approach to medical malpractice is that legal remedies for medical error are not viewed as part of the continuum of care. Thus, a new model - driven by the principle of care and the goal of healing - is needed to address medical errors more effectively. Building from these core principles of care and healing, the author develops a new healing-centered framework which provides a better assessment of …

Arkansas' New Choice-Of-Law Rule Of Interstate Torts: A Critique Of Wallis, Williams And The "Better Rule Of Law", L. Lynn Hogue

L. Lynn Hogue

No abstract provided.

Schlemmer V. Fireman's Fund Insurance Co.: A Case For Rethinking Arkansas' Choice-Of-Law Rule For Interstate Torts, L. Lynn Hogue

L. Lynn Hogue

No abstract provided.

Website Proprietorship And Online Harassment, Nancy Kim

Nancy Kim

Although harassment and bullying have always existed, when such behavior is conducted online, the consequences can be uniquely devastating. The anonymity of harassers, the ease of widespread digital dissemination, and the inability to contain and/or eliminate online information can aggravate the nature of harassment on the Internet. Furthermore, section 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides Web site sponsors with immunity for content posted by others and no incentive to remove offending content. Given the unique nature of online harassment, ex post punitive measures are inadequate to redress grievances. In this Article, I propose the imposition of proprietorship liability upon …

Imposing Tort Liability On Websites For Cyber Harassment, Nancy Kim

Nancy Kim

Several female law students were the subject of derogatory comments on AutoAdmit.com, a message board about law school admissions. When one of the women asked the website administrator to remove certain comments, the administrator discussed her request in an online post, prompting further attacks. An undergraduate student’s rape was revealed on a gossip site, JuicyCampus.com, where posters engaged in a cruel session of “blame the victim.” Another student on that site was falsely identified, by name, as being a stalker, bi-polar, and suicidal. When officials at her university asked JuicyCampus.com to remove the most egregious posts, the company refused. These …

Website Design And Liability, Nancy Kim

Nancy Kim

Two regrettable behaviors have emerged online: the posting of content about others without their consent; and impulsive postings with no consideration of long-term consequences. Website operators can either encourage or discourage these regrettable behaviors and influence their consequences through the design of their website and by the fostering of norms and codes of conduct. Unfortunately, courts interpret section 230 of the Communications Decency Act as providing websites with broad immunity. In an earlier article, I argued that a proprietorship standard should be imposed upon websites, which would require them to take reasonable measures to prevent foreseeable harm. This article further …

Spousal Emotional Abuse As A Tort? , Ira Mark Ellman, Stephen D. Sugarman

Stephen D Sugarman

No abstract provided.

Self-Defense Against Robots, A. Michael Froomkin, Zak Colangelo

A. Michael Froomkin

This paper examines when, under U.S. law, humans may use force against robots to protect themselves, their property, and their privacy. May a landowner legally shoot down a trespassing drone? May she hold a trespassing autonomous car as security against damage done or further torts? Is the fear that a drone may be operated by a paparazzo or a peeping Tom sufficient grounds to disable or interfere with it? How hard may you shove if the office robot rolls over your foot? This paper addresses all those issues and one more: what rules and standards we could put into place …

Two Myths About The Alien Tort Statute, Anthony J. Bellia, Bradford R. Clark

Anthony J. Bellia

In Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., the Supreme Court applied the presumption against extraterritorial application of U.S. law to hold that the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) did not encompass a claim between aliens for misconduct that occurred in another nation. Without much elaboration, the Court stated that the ATS only encompasses claims that “touch and concern the territory of the United States . . . with sufficient force to displace the presumption.” As it did in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, the Kiobel Court purported to rest its decision on the original public meaning of the ATS when enacted in 1789. …

Congressional Power And State Court Jurisdiction, Anthony J. Bellia

Anthony J. Bellia

Federal laws that regulate state institutions give rise to what the Supreme Court has described as the oldest question of constitutional law. In recent years, the Court has confronted questions of congressional power to regulate state legislatures and executives, but has not directly confronted any question of congressional power to regulate state courts. Since the Founding, questions of congressional power to regulate state court jurisdiction of Article III cases have arisen - most notably, congressional power to assign jurisdiction of federal criminal cases to state courts. Today, significant questions of congressional power to regulate state court jurisdiction over non-Article III …

Ockham's Scalpel: A Return To A Reasonableness Standard, Ellen Wertheimer

Ellen Wertheimer

No abstract provided.

Los Tormentos De La Teoría Del Contacto Social: Contextualizando (Otra Vez) Una Categoría Jurídica, Renzo E. Saavedra Velazco

Renzo E. Saavedra Velazco

No abstract provided.

Aba Seer Tsca Preemption Of Private Rights Of Action Under Tsca And Tsca Legislation Briefing Paper, Charles L. Franklin, Lynn Bergeson, Lawrence E. Culleen, Mark N. Duvall, Jean M. Eggen, Maureen F. Gorsen, Eric P. Gotting, Martha E. Marrapese, Joanne Thelmo, Kirk Tracy, Jim Wedeking

Jean M. Eggen

In reviewing the statute, regulations, guidance and case law utilized in implementing the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the ABA SEER Pesticide, Chemical Regulation and Right-to-Know Committee, with the support of the Section’s Special Committee on Congressional Relations, developed this paper on the interplay of federal statutory law and state common law to provide a frame of reference for the selection of statutory language regarding federal preemption, particularly in regards to the effect of the proposed statutory amendments on state tort actions. A tort suit is filed by a person who claims to have suffered an injury from a wrongful …

What Is An Accident?, Daniel B. Yeager

Daniel B. Yeager

Please consider for publication my attached 5000-word, 28-page, lightly annotated (39 footnotes) Essay, entitled “What Is an Accident?”

Here I attempt to decode the most frequently proferred excuse in and out of law. Surprisingly, as central as accidents are to questions of responsibility, their criteria have received almost no attention at all. From what I can tell, mine is the first sustained attempt to identify the grammar of accidents, an endeavor that follows up on similar efforts to do the same with the excuse of mistake in my book J.L. Austin and the Law: Exculpation and the Explication of Responsibility …

Constructing Autonomy: A Kantian Framework, Bailey H. Kuklin

Bailey H. Kuklin

No abstract provided.

L'Ontologia Dei Danni Non Patrimoniali, Pier Giuseppe Monateri

Pier Giuseppe Monateri

L'autore esamina la nuova decisione della Cassazione che, dandogli ragione, ristabilisce in termini coerenti la 'ontologia' dei danni non patrimoniali, chiarendo che il danno esistenziale ha natura propria e differente da quella del danno morale e del danno biologico

Strict Liability Wrongs, Gregory Keating

Gregory C. Keating

Strict liability is an orphan among moral theorists of torts. They wish either to expunge it from the law of torts entirely, or to assimilate it to negligence liability. This chapter argues that strict liability torts are genuine wrongs. They involve violations of rights, and they delineate two distinctive domains of wrongful conduct. One domain—the territory of “harm-based” strict liabilities—involves the distinctive wrong of harming-without-repairing. The other domain—the territory of “sovereignty torts”—involves the distinctive wrong of violating core autonomy rights which confer on persons fundamental powers of control over their selves and their property.

Lapses Of Attention In Medical Malpractice And Road Accidents, Robert D. Cooter, Ariel Porat

Robert Cooter

A doctor who lapses and injures her patient, and a driver who lapses and causes an accident, are liable under negligence law for the harm done. But lapse is not necessarily negligence, since reasonable people lapse from time to time. We show that tort liability for “reasonable” lapses distorts doctors’, drivers’, and manufacturers’ incentives to take care. Furthermore, such liability provides potential injurers with incentives to substitute activities which are less prone to lapses with activities which are more prone to lapses, even if such substitution is inefficient. We propose several solutions to the inefficiencies that result from liability for …

“Doubling-Down” For Defendants: The Pernicious Effects Of Tort Reform, Scott Devito, Andrew W. Jurs

Scott DeVito

No abstract provided.

Compelling Product Sellers To Transmit Government Public Health Messages, Stephen D. Sugarman

Stephen D Sugarman

No abstract provided.

The Technological And Business Evolution Of Machine Based Gambling In America, Darren Prum, Carlin Mccrory

Darren A. Prum

Machine Based Gambling has become a major source of revenue to many states across the country that need the money but face obstacles to raising taxes within their jurisdiction. The figures are startling with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s cut at over $1.456 Billion in 2011, which exceed the next closest state by $500 million. In addition, there are more than twice as many slot machines available to the public than ATMs. The benefits of machine based gaming has allowed many governments to revitalized tourism locations, make some Native Americans economically self-sufficient, and save horse and dog race tracks from closing …

Introduction, Part Ii, Perspectives In Mass Tort Litigation Symposium, Christopher J. Robinette

Christopher J Robinette

Promises To Keep? Coaches Tubby Smith, Jimmy Williams And Lessons Learned In 2012, Adam Epstein, Henry Lowenstein

Adam Epstein

The primary purpose of this article is to explore the 2012 legal decision that stemmed from an employment-related fiasco in 2007 when Coach Orlando Henry “Tubby” Smith first formed his staff at UM and asked coach Jimmy Williams from Oklahoma State University to join him as an assistant coach. Smith’s offer, however, proved not to be a legally binding offer, at least according to the Minnesota Supreme Court, because Smith apparently did not have the authority to make the offer in the first place. In fact, Jimmy Williams was declared by the Minnesota Supreme Court majority to have been sophisticated …